


Watching

by Beleriandings



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 22:17:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 462
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037009
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Beleriandings/pseuds/Beleriandings
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Maglor looks back on his time with Elrond and Elros, many years later.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Watching

 

I watch Elrond.

Some would call me mad. They  _do_  call me mad, depraved, murderous and dangerous and many things far worse. I have heard so many voices in this new world; it simply swarms with them, a clamour of sound like the roaring of the ocean, the roaring in my head. But he is quiet, his mind wide and blue and clear, although tinged, as ever, with pain. I know that that is partly my doing, and it tears at me. Sometimes I think that I have felt too much pain myself, and I am numb to it now. And yet, then I remember the legacy I left him, and it returns, sharp and jangling and quite as raw as all those numberless years ago.

I watched Elros, too, until he died, fading away into the blackness of his own choice. A choice, I realise with a bitter and still-fresh sense of irony, that I could never make for myself. I could never let go, which is why I am still here, a ghost of another world. A world all sanitised and romanticised in song these days. Couched in poetic words, that do not quite describe me. In fact, it is almost painfully absurd how little they describe me.

Twins. At the same time perfectly identical and exact mirror images. I wondered, sometimes, whether when they ever looked in the mirror and had a moment of confusion as to whether they were seeing themselves or their brother. I never asked either of them. It certainly did not seem quite right to indulge my curiosity in such a way at the time.

I did ask my brothers this once, when we were young. (The memories of this time do not fade nor run together like the later ones.) They answered only with their bright, identical laughter, throwing cherry stones at my knees as I towered over them where they lay on the grass in our garden. 

A whole other world, which I did not realise at the time was  _my_  world.

 _This_  world is not my world.

Elrond has twins of his own now. They are strong, cheerful, talkative children, not prone, as their father was, to melancholia. They do him good, I sometimes think.

I feel… how do I feel? Do I even have the capacity to feel anymore? I do not know. But I know that the song of the world carries on, motifs and snatches of melody that repeat over and over, twisting past each other as harmony blends with tangled discord, here and there a raw and painful memory.

But I do not take part in this particular song.

My part in it is over. I am convinced my part in everything is over.

I fade.

I watch.


End file.
